Feds: Suspect used stolen $400k on strippers

Updated 10:42 pm, Friday, December 13, 2013

Todd C. Seward was arrested on suspicion he stole $400,000 from his employer.

Todd C. Seward was arrested on suspicion he stole $400,000 from his employer.

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Feds: Suspect used stolen $400k on strippers

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The FBI has arrested a former comptroller on suspicion of stealing $400,000 from his employer and possibly spending most of that on strippers, court records show.

Todd C. Seward, 52, left a trail of alleged fraud and theft, including allegations that he stole $90,000 from an athletics booster club at Clements High School in Fort Bend County, near Houston.

In the local case, an FBI affidavit said Seward was working as a comptroller for a San Antonio company identified only by the initials G.L.L. Its owner hired Seward earlier this year to handle accounting matters, and the owner later found a series of checks that Seward had written out to himself.

Confronted, Seward told the owner he was only borrowing the money so his house would not be foreclosed and promised to repay the money, the affidavit said. But the owner later found more money missing and learned Seward used a stamp to make it seem as the owner had approved the checks, authorities allege.

An FBI investigation found Seward spent about $60,000 on a pickup and spent the rest on strip clubs in Texas and elsewhere, according to court records.

In Fort Bend County, Seward was indicted on charges of fiduciary misapplications. Seward was the treasurer of a booster club at Clements, where his son was on the golf team, and wrote 23 checks to himself and a company under which he did business, according to a motion to revoke his bond.

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“Evidently, he was stealing even from his own son,” said Tom Harfield, president of the booster club.

Harfield said the club found out about the thefts when a San Antonio bank called to verify a check that Seward apparently was trying to cash.

“It caught us off guard,” Harfield said. “We had a hard time meeting our obligations.”

While the charges were pending, Seward fled to Florida then came to San Antonio, according to the motion to revoke probation. The Fort Bend Sheriff's Office spoke to Seward by phone, but he said he was too busy to go back to face his charges, authorities said.

The FBI swooped in while investigating the case in San Antonio and arrested him before he could take a one-way flight to Florida, federal court documents state.

He remains behind bars here on a charge of identity theft pending a bail hearing on Dec. 23. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.